Testing the Cross-National Social Bases of Environmentalism: A Current and Comparative Analysis of Conservation Behaviors
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15448/1980-8623.2014.3.17233Keywords:
Socio-demographic factors, attitudinal factors, cross-national analysis, ISSP, conservation behavior.Abstract
Despite the growing interest in cross-national comparative studies, few of them have focused specifically on analyzing the social bases of pro-environmental behaviors. This article explores socio-demographic differences in private and public environmental behaviors (PrEB and PuEB) across 30 countries. Structural Equation Modeling and multilevel analysis were applied to the 2010 International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) database. The analyses showed reliable positive relationships across-nations on both behaviors only for education. Age had the same consistent effect as education for PrEB. This pattern was also positive but less strong for gender on PrEB and for income on PuEB. Size of hometown and income had diffuse or mixed effects for PrEB, as did gender, age and size of hometown for PuEB. Nevertheless, those relationships were modified when controlling for the effect of attitudinal variables on behaviors. Additionally, the socio-demographic determinants of both behaviors varied in predictive power across nations (R2 from 0.2 to 16). Multilevel interactions showed that the differences for gender on PrEB and for education on PuEB were stronger in more developed countries. Therefore, the social bases varied according to the type of behavior analyzed, the degree of cross-national consistency, predictive power and the level of development of the country.Downloads
References
Arcury, T. A. & Christianson, E. H. (1993). Rural-urban differences
in environmental knowledge and actions. The Journal of Environmental Education, 25(1), 19-25. doi: 10.1080/
1993.9941940
Berenguer, J. & Corraliza, J. A. (2000). Preocupación ambiental y
comportamientos ecológicos. Psicothema, 12(3), 325-329.
Berger, I. E. (1997). The demographics of recycling and the
structure of environmental behavior. Environment and Behavior,
(4), 515-531. doi: 10.1177/001391659702900404
Brand, K. W. (2002). Conciencia y comportamiento medioambientales:estilos de vida más verdes. In M. Redclift &
G. Woodgate (Eds.), Sociología del medio ambiente: una
perspectiva internacional (pp. 205-221). Madrid: McGraw-Hill.
Buttel, F. H. & Flinn, W. L. (1974). The structure of support for the
environmental movement, 1968-1970. Rural Sociology, 39(1),
-69.
Chao, Y.-L. & Lam, S.-P. (2011). Measuring responsible
environmental behavior: self-reported and other-reported
measures and their differences in testing a behavioral model.
Environment and Behavior, 43(1), 53-71. doi: 10.1177/
Corral, V. (1997). Dual “realities” of conservation behavior: Selfreporteds vs observations of re-use and recycling behavior.
Journal of Environmental Psychology, 17(2), 135-145. doi:
1006/jevp.1997.0048
Corral, V. & Zaragoza, F. (2000). Bases sociodemográficas
y psicológicas de la conducta de reutilización: un modelo
estructural [Socio-Demographic and Psychological Basis of
Reuse-Behavior: A Structural Model]. Medio Ambiente Y
Comportamiento Humano, 1(1), 9-29.
Diamantopoulos, A., Schlegelmilch, B. B., Sinkovics, R., &
Bohlen, G. M. (2003). Can socio-demographics still play a role
in profiling green consumers? A review of the evidence and an
empirical investigation. Journal of Business Research, 56(6),
-480. doi: 10.1016/S0148-2963(01)00241-7
Dietz, T., Kalof, L., & Stern, P. C. (2002). Gender, values, and
environmentalism. Social Science Quarterly, 83(1), 353-364.
doi:10.1111/1540-6237.00088
Dietz, T., Stern, P. C., & Guagnano, G. A. (1998). Social structural
and social psychological bases of environmental concern.
Environment and Behavior, 30(4), 450-471. doi: 10.1177/
Eckersley, R. (1995). Environmentalism and political theory:
towards an ecocentric approach. London: UCL Press.
Franzen, A., & Meyer, R. (2010). Environmental Attitudes in
Cross-National Perspective: A Multilevel Analysis of the ISSP
and 2000. European Sociological Review, 26(2), 219-234.
doi: 10.1093/esr/jcp018
Greenbaum, A. (1995). Taking stock of two decades of research
on the social bases of environmental concern. In M. Mehta &
É. Ouellet (Eds.), Environmental sociology: theory and practice
(pp. 125-152). North York, Ontario, Canada: Captus Press.
Guagnano, G. A., Stern, P. C., & Dietz, T. (1995). Influences on
Attitude-Behavior Relationships: A Natural Experiment with
Curbside Recycling. Environment and Behavior, 27(5), 699-718.
doi: 10.1177/0013916595275005
Hadler, M. & Haller, M. (2011). Global activism and nationally driven
recycling: The influence of world society and national contexts
on public and private environmental behavior. International
Sociology, 26, 315-345. doi: 10.1177/0268580910392258
Haller, M., Jowell, R., & Smith, T. W. (Eds.). (2009). The
International Social Survey Programme, 1984-2009: Charting
the Globe. Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge.
Hernández, B. & Hidalgo, M. C. (2010). Actitudes y creencias
hacia el medio ambiente. In J. Aragonés & M. Amérigo (Eds.).
Psicología ambiental (pp. 281-301). Madrid: Piramide.
Hidalgo, M. C., Hernández, B., Lambistos, M. J., & Pisano, I.
(2011). Evaluating pro-environmental behavior: differences between low- and high- involvement behaviors. International Journal of Hispanic Psychology, 4(1), 45-54.
Hunter, L. M., Hatch, A., & Johnson, A. (2004). Cross-national
gender variation in environmental behaviors. Social Science
Quarterly, 85(3), 677-694.
Marquart-Pyatt, S. T. (2008). Are there similar sources of
environmental concern? Comparing industrialized countries.
Social Science Quarterly, 89(5), 1312-1335.
Marquart-Pyatt, S. T. (2012a). Contextual influences on environmental concerns cross-nationally: A multilevel investigation.
Social Science Research, 41(5), 1085-1099. doi: 10.1016/j.
ssresearch.2012.04.003
Marquart-Pyatt, S. T. (2012b). Explaining Environmental Activism
Across Countries. Society & Natural Resources, 25(7), 683-699.
doi: 10.1080/08941920.2011.625073
Milfont, T. L. (2012). Cultural Differences in Environmental
Engagement. In S. D. Clayton (Ed.). The Oxford handbook of
environmental and conservation psychology (pp. 181-202). New
York: Oxford University Press.
Nawrotzki, R. J. (2012). The Politics of Environmental Concern A
Cross-National Analysis. Organization & Environment, 25(3),
-307. doi: 10.1177/1086026612456535
Neumayer, E. (2004). The environment, left-wing political
orientation and ecological economics. Ecological Economics,
(3-4), 167-175. doi: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2004.06.006
Pampel, F. C. (2013). The Varied Influence of SES on Environmental
Concern. Social Science Quarterly, 95(1), 57-75. doi: 10.1111/
ssqu.12045
Pato, C., Ros, M., & Tamayo, Á. (2005). Creencias y comportamiento
ecológico: un estudio empírico con estudiantes brasileños [Beliefs and Ecological Behavior: an empirical study with Brazilian students]. Medio Ambiente Y Comportamiento Humano, 6(1), 5-22.
Tamayo, A. & Pato, C. (2006). Valores, creencias ambientales y
comportamiento ecológico de activismo [Values, Environmental
Beliefs and Ecological Behavior of Activism]. Medio Ambiente
Y Comportamiento Humano, 7(1), 51-66.
Thøgersen, J. (2005). How May Consumer Policy Empower Consumers for Sustainable Lifestyles? Journal of Consumer Policy, 28(2), 143-177. doi: 10.1007/s10603-005-2982-8
Van Liere, K. D. & Dunlap, R. E. (1980). The social bases of
environmental concern: a review of hypotheses, explanations and
empirical evidence. Public Opinion Quarterly, 44(2), 181-197.
doi: 10.1086/268583
Xiao, C. & Dunlap, R. E. (2007). Validating a comprehensive model
of environmental concern cross-nationally: A U.S.-Canadian
comparison. Social Science Quarterly, 88(2), 471-493.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright
The submission of originals to Psico implies the transfer by the authors of the right for publication. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication. If the authors wish to include the same data into another publication, they must cite Psico as the site of original publication.
Creative Commons License
Except where otherwise specified, material published in this journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, which allows unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original publication is correctly cited.
